Class Differentiation of the Peasantry: Results of Rural Surveys in Andhra Pradesh

P Sundarayya PART Two

KAZA VILLAGE is about eleven kilometres from Guntur town. It has both wet and dry lands. On the average,, a wet acre yields a net produce worth roughly Rs 500 a year, while dry land brings in Rs 200 to 250 per acre, at prices prevailing towards the beginning of 1974. A textile mill (Hemalatha Textiles) located within the rural boundaries offers employment opportunities to a number of poor villagers. Quite a few of the women go out for seasonal jobs in tobacco companies in Guntur and its environs. In what follows, all families referred to are single (defined in Part One) and all lands are wet (arrived at by converting dry into wet on the basis of 1 acre wet s== 2, or in some cases 3, acres dry unless otherwise stated.)

There were 1030 single families in Kaza's population of 4074 at the end of 1973. Out of this number 1988(49 per cent) are engaged in some form of work. Participating in all major operations are 890 men, 45 per cent of the working population, 806 women (40.5 per cent) and 292 children (14.5 per cent). Thus for every 100 working male adults there are 91 working women and 33 working children. In the families without land as well as those owning upto 2.5 wet acres there is one working woman for every working male adult. The proportion of working women to working men falls steeply as the size of the holding increases.

Table I gives a broad picture of land distribution among various sections of rural households. The extreme inequality becomes clear from the fact that 44 per cent of the village families, who either are landless or have holdings of less than 0.5 acre, own only 4.4 per cent of the land while 5.2 per cent families with more than 5 acres hold 34 per cent land.

Twenty-six per cent of the land in the village, that is, 409 acres, is leased out. Of the 409 acres, 199 (49 per cent) are leased out by 23 families owning over 5 acres and 41 acres (10 per cent) by 17 families owning 2.5—5.0 acres. The remaining 169 acres (41 per cent) are leased out by families owning upto 2.5 acres of land, 176 of whom, together with 21 landless families, lease in 350 acres.